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Dessert

Sweet Potato Pone

A baked sweet potato dessert with butter, sugar, ginger, milk, orange rind, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,833 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Pone

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter in a mixing bowl.

  2. Add the sugar and mix until creamy.

  3. Stir in the remaining ingredients until well combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered pan.

  2. Bake for 1 hour in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C).

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Ginger + orangetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Sweet potato + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together306 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Sweet potato + orangetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together191 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Sweet potato + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together596 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Hot mashed sweet potato
Provides the bulk and moist body of the pone.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness through fat.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown as it bakes.
Milk
Adds moisture and softens the texture.
Orange rind and juice
Adds bright citrus aroma and a touch of acidity.
Ginger
Adds warm, spicy aroma.

The step that matters

Creaming the butter and sugar. Beating butter with sugar traps air in the fat, which helps the pone stay light and evenly textured once baked.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sweet potato, milk, ginger, butter, sugar):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sweet potato, milk, ginger, butter, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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